NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 325, 28 June 1875, Page 4

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

{From the Spectator .) Mr Childers has delivered a lecture to his constituents on Canada and the United States, the main points of which seem to have been these:—He thought the Canadians were beginning to bear to their American neighbors much the position which the Scotch bear to Englishmen, and would succeed in preserving a distinctive national character. They were about, he feared, to pass through a period of commercial depression, but they were in the main a most prosperous and well-governed people. The chief alterations he saw in the United States since his visit fifteen years ago, were the increased self-reliance of the people—who were ceasing to think what other nations were saying of them—and the increased nationalism. An American now spoke as an American, and not as a citizen of a particular State within the Union. Mr Childers also remarked that the proportion of foreigners, and more especially of Germans, in the States was much greater than formerly, and might give rise to some religious difficulties, The Germans, -for instance, did not see why in a State without an Established Church there should be any Sunday laws, and this was but a specimen of much more seriom divergencies of opinion. .. i: y. There is a grand discussion going on in th( papers as to why Englishmen do not get the best teas, and Russians do. Some of the writers, who all seem to be experts, say the MOM if the price; but then Englishmen

will give any price for what they want, and do give high prices for Indian teas. Others say the fault is |the grocers’, who want large profits, and make them by mixing teas ; but the grocers could put a profit price on best teas if they liked, and if the public wanted them. And finally a third set say the public does not know good tea from bad, and buys tea as it comes, which is simply untrue,the dealers in the inferior teas always “ loading ” them with good tea, as wine merchants load had sherry with brandy. All this while nobody mentions the old reason, which, we believe, was given origiginally by Mr Fortune, and has been repeated at intervals for thirty years. Englishmen do not drink the best teas, because when the teas get here they are common teas. They will not stand a voyage, though they will stand a long land journey, The notion, by the way, that the best Indian teas get here is erroneous. The finest “chops” of Deyrah Dhoon tea, which is to Assam tea what fine Pekoe is to rough Souchong, are sold on the spot, and go Northwards, It appears from some statistics published in the Times that the total indebtedness of the local authorities throughout England is now £77,073,000, of which the boroughs owe £30,441,000, the Harbor Trustees £19,733,000, the Metropolitan Board £12,766,000, the Urban Sanitary Commission £5,029,000, the counties £2,965,090, the Poor-law Guardians £3,549,000, and the Burial Boards and Drainage authorities the remainder. This debt is equal to eight months’ rateable value of the property pledged as security, and shows a tendency to increase every year. Money appears to be obtainable by local authorities from private sources with great ease at from 3£ to per cent, and although only two local bodies—the trustees of Warkworth and Bridport harbors—have failed to pay interest, still nothing appears to have happened to those two. It is, we confess, this easy borrowing power we dread, when proposals are made for more popular municipal authorities, more especially as the work of sanitation and rehousing the poor can scarcely be said to have begun. A medium borough, governed by philanthropists —say, for instance, Carlisle—might strangle itself with debts in less than ten years, and make all property valueless. If an account published in the Times ’is correct, the Post-Office Money-Order system is unexpectedly unprofitable. In 1873 no less than £21,630,000 was remitted through the Post Office, and a commission of 1 per cent was paid upon it all, yet that enormous business scarcely yielded any profit, and probably produced a loss. The Post Office is now accumulating the “ unclaimed ” money, apparently to form a sort of guarantee fund for itself. The Times suggests that there is loss on Colonial orders, as we receive orders from the colonies to pay about £500,000 a year, and only give orders for about £BO,OOO, the difference of commission going to Colonial post-offices, and inquires how the English offices with no money meet the drafts on them. Are the Government compelled to be perpetually sending about money, or is the clerk-work really in excess of the profit received ? It

, is very difficult to believe that a private banking firm would not contrive somehow to make a profit out of an overturn of ; £21,000,000 a year. i Long telegrams are reaching England about the relations between Austria and the Porte, which of late have been rather , strained.” As far as we can gather from them, Austria wants not only that a system of Railways in Turkey should be connected with her own, but that they should be constructed by Austrian concessionnaires ; while the Turks would rather not have the railways, or if that is impossible, would like them in their own hands. A body of financiers in Vienna, interested in concessions, would seem to be pressing the Austrian Foreign Office, and so bitter is the dispute that it will probably lead to a change of Ministry in Tuikey the Sultan recalling Mahmoud Pasha. Since the temporary effacementof France and the retirement of Great Britain from foreign business, the “ pressure ” on the Porte has become so severe that Turkish Ministries seem to exist only at the pleasure of the three remaining embassies, and a Grand Vizier may disappear because some speculator in Vienna thinks he is in the way. If this lasts there will be a catastrophe in Constantinople, where the old Mussulman party, which derests all this interference, and with all its vices has some national pride, is rapidly regaining power. We have given proof of an almost Quixotic desiie to let the Roman Catholics of the Empire expound their precise position in answer to Mr Gladstone’s charge against them that they had been guilty either of grave mutability or of the gravest treachery, by admitting three very able, and in a historical point of view, very elaborate letters-* of unconscionable length by the way—from •' An Irish Catholic” on the subject. We are by no means desirous of any continuance of a controversy which has always seemed to us one of purely historical interest, though we shall of course admit, as we have already admitted, any apparently successful attempt confined within moderate limits of length, to impugn the facts or inferences of our correspondent. But we shall probably sum up the view of almost all impartial readers of this discussion, when we say that “ An Irish Catholic ” seems to us to have reduced the historical justification of Mr Gladstone’s accusation to very insignificant limits indeed. He has, we think, finally disposed of the assertion that, except in one instance, there was at any time any authorised, public, or official renunciation by the Catholics of either kingdom, in exchange for civil or political privileges, of the right to hold the dogma of the Infallibility of the Pope. He has shown that in ore instance, £when the English VicarsApostolic, whether in haste, or error, or wile, did no doubt commit themselves

to what seems to us a deliberate renunciation of the right, they publicly withdrew from that position before the advantage which they had hoped to derive from it had been gained and that both the Irish and English Catholic authorities repeatedly and publicly avowed doctrines inconsistent with it; and that ever afterwards the English and Irish statesmen took the very sound view that while guarantees for the loyalty of Catholics were very desirable, they cared but little about the tctual doctrine officially held by Catholics ts to Infallibility, and nothing at all as to the possibility of any future development of that doctrine. If Germany had the calm good sense to take the same view now, dlurope would be spared an infinity of peril, heartburning, and perhaps blood. But even he most eminent statesmen of to day seem to be themselves infected, somehow, by the ecclesiastical spirit*